Habitat for Inhumanity
Time: 1:53am. The only sound I could hear was a cricket parked next to my door. Its incessant chirping was indicative of some misguided motivation to excel in life. I lit a cigarette. The blue smoke curled slowly towards the night sky. The cricket chirped some more, as I flicked the cigarette butt into the street. It glistened with the late evening rain. A few cars slowly hummed by, water spraying quietly from their tires. Soft yellow orbs of light reflected off the wet pavement. Fatigue wracked my body. I looked over my shoulder to my second floor flat. It was as inviting as an untreated rash. Nothing there but cold pizza, cheap beer, and a half-eaten bag of pretzels. There was nothing there to connect me to it, nothing except a random batch of memories. I lit another cigarette.
My umbrella was inside and I did not want to go up and get it. The only thing I wanted to do was to get as far away from this nowhere as I could. Anything would be better than this. A bare mattress with no chance of a bare anything else under a bare bulb lingered on the second floor of the shabbily maintained building I lived in.
One step, then another; I crossed the street. There was a chic Chinese place there that looked promising. Just as I was about to open the door, the little chink man flipped the sign, gave me a dirty look, then twisted the door lock with such animation I doubted for a second if the old gook was real or not. What must have been his wife busied herself with cleaning the tables. Fucking immigrants. They take our jobs, our loans, our opportunities. Leave us with nothing more than the skin on our backs half the time.
I turned from the glass door. There stood before me a dirty, unkempt, and downright nasty looking human being.
“You got some change, mister?”
I looked at this filthy creature and shook my head as I reached into my rather empty pockets. I pulled out a couple of wadded dollar bills and a quarter. I put it in his grimy hand. His nails were yellow from smoking, the ends black and broken. His skin was thick, not really swollen, but thick like a cracked and wrinkled eel. I looked back across the street. The dim yellow light in my apartment looked slightly more inviting than it had a few minutes ago. At least I had that much, at least I wasn’t begging for change at two in the morning in the rain in front of a closed chink restaurant.
I crossed the street again. I could feel the dirty old man’s eyes burning into me. Did I really want him to know where I lived? Did it really matter? The old man already had the last of my change. He wouldn’t get much else if he tried. Another couple approached and he eagerly sought out the opportunity to get them for what he could.
I opened the flimsy screen door to my place. It creaked loudly in the still night air. The bum looked over, but was more concerned with the young wealthy looking couple. The hall light flickered. A fly beat himself senselessly on the bare bulb. Its ten thousand eyes must have been scorched by the constant contact with the burning hot surface of the bulb. Must be how Icarus felt when he flew too close to the sun. At least his wings melted. These stupid creatures won’t stop until they are smashed by a merciful flyswatter, rolled up newspaper, or whatever.
Faint sounds of fucking filtered out of the first floor apartment. The fly was unaffected by what I heard. I tried to imagine who it might be. Maybe it was that fine black chick that liked to hang around the area. Maybe it was one of those African hairdressers who were pimped out by their shop owners on the side, or maybe it was just some whore he picked up. I heard he liked them ready and cheap. From the sounds of it, she was one if not the other.
Up the stairs. One, two, three. Pause, listen. She was talking to him. I listened harder through the fat fucker’s door. Tell me how you feel, how do I make you feel? King. Whas dat, baby? Like I’m a king. You make me feel like I’m a king. It was hardly an audible whisper, like he could barely form the words as he cried tears of real blood against her drippingly bare bosom. He was a king all right, a filthy nasty one. The sounds grew louder again. I guess she felt bad and wanted him to feel like a king, even if only for a moment. I hastened my assent. The last thing I wanted was to get caught peeping like some sort of perv.
I opened my apartment door. It was straight off the pages of Requiem for a Dream, Junkie, or a day in the life of Charles Bukowski. Old Bill Burroughs would have been proud how well I recreated his world of croakers and junk in this habitat for inhumanity. I carefully removed my jacket, found a hanger, and hung it in my closet. The closet seemed safe enough. I would place the hangers two inches apart in a futile attempt to keep the bugs from going from one hanger to the next.
Roaches are unstoppable. They go absolutely wherever they want. They possess neither rhyme nor reason. They can survive on no food or water for weeks on end. Where you find one, you will find a million, all feasting at the world’s largest family reunion picnic. There was a flyswatter in each room, not for flies, but for the roaches.
I flipped open the pizza box, looked closely for evidence of trespassers. Not finding any, I picked up a stiffened slice, folded it slightly, and slid the end into my mouth. Teeth tore apart the stale crust. I turned the glue-like mixture around my mouth. I took another bite, followed by a swift swallow of Natural Lite. Slowly I was beginning to relax. The television sat mute. Nothing played on it since the cable was shut off three weeks ago.
A solitary trooper trudged across the top of the pizza box. I watched it for a moment. He wasn’t about to get the last piece of pepperoni and sausage. I grabbed the blue fly swatter and swung it like a club. The plastic resonated loudly off the hollow cardboard. Its light green guts splattered across the red letters of the white box.
I got up to use the bathroom. The front door of the apartment building slammed shut. I looked out the window. It was one of the hairdressers. She looked completely used up. Her clothes barely on, she stood in the light rain with tears streaming down her dark face. She wiped them as if she were wiping away the humiliation that caused them. Her whole soul seemed to be drowning. He was sending her back to the shop. She would be sold again that night.
“I t’ought I would be wit’ you tonight. Don’t you know, don’t you care what dey will do? Dey can’t do dis to me again tonight. King? You are no king! You are filt’! I spit upon you.”
He shrugged and walked back inside. The door closed. She stood in the rain a moment more, and then walked to the sidewalk. She sat down on the wet pavement, feet sticking out in the street. The chinks looked at her like she was crazy. They had nothing to offer other than mean looks and frantic hand gestures that must have meant “go away you nasty fucking immigrant.”
I watched all this from my apartment window. The answer to so many of my problems was sitting alone, wet, and probably cold not more than fifty feet away. The apartment was barren. I had nothing to offer her. Nothing except one night of freedom. I walked outside, stood next to her, and lit a cigarette. She looked at me with the same disgust as she had the King.
“You don’t have to go back tonight,” I said as I blew smoke into the night sky. She looked from me to the glistening street, then back towards me. Her face was the model image of hopeless abandon.
“What da fuck could you possibly have for me? Your little white worm? I’ve had enough of dat for tonight.”
“I don’t have anything to offer. Just a dry apartment where you can sleep for awhile. You look like you could use it.”
She looked down the street as a man staggered towards us. She looked up at me and offered me her hand. Her watch said 2:17.
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About the Author:
Christopher Padgett grew up in Alton, Illinois. When he was 21 (in 1996), he met and married his current wife. Since then, they have had three kids. They have been exceedingly fortunate to live abroad for a number of years. Much of the material he writes is set in either Germany or Korea, both of which he has called home. Mr. Padgett currently lives near Clarksville, Tennessee with his wife, three kids, and two pugs.
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